COMMENT:Can a deeply-rooted tendency like hatred that obscures a human being's true nature be given up?

The likes of professional therapists and counsellors, along with religious believers, are prone to answer, optimistically, on the basis of some theory or other: yes. Optimistically thinking, the answer is always: yes.

Pessimistically thinking, however, the answer, based on actual experience of failed personal endeavour, or based on objective consideration of the slaughter bench of human history, tends to be: no.

In the thinking of Buddha/Ashvaghosha, evidently, the first thing, in any event, is NOT TO DO anything to make the problem worse.

So the first practical step, as the bulldog locks onto his intended target and his hate-ometer begins to rise from 0 towards 10, is not to try to bring out his inherent Buddha-nature (at least not yet), but the more modest one of distracting the blighter's attention before his eyes turn red and he charges in for the kill.

Similarly, when I recognize that my mind has been dwelling on some unpleasantness, just at that moment of cognition the option exists of not dwelling on the disagreeable stimulus -- providing that I am able, like a good human pack leader to give a swift correction to the inner bulldog. This is not easy, but neither is it impossible. And every day provides ample opportunities to hit the target.

In his original instructions for sitting, Zen Master Dogen wrote that when a thought arises in the mind, just wake up. And in the waking up to it, it vanishes.

There is no grounds there for that fool's gold which is optimism. Rather, one senses in the background, as with Ashvaghosha's writings, the presence of true gold.

EH Johnston:But when the mind is agitated by the vice of malevolence, do not choose the subject of meditation known as 'impure'; for that meditation tends to the destruction of the man whose nature is full of hate, just as pungent treatment does for the man of bilious temperament.

Linda Covill:When the mind is agitated by the fault of malice, the impurity meditation should not be undertaken, for the impurity meditation destroys a hate-filled man, like treatment with acids in the case of a patient with a bile condition.